N.J. committee to consider tougher gun laws today

Today, an Assembly committee is scheduled to take up bills aimed at reducing gun violence by making New Jersey gun laws tougher. The bills would reduce the size of ammunition magazines to 10, ban armor-piercing ammunition and require gun buyers to provide proof of firearm safety, among other things. “The time to get serious about protecting our children, our law enforcement officers and our communities from gun violence is long overdue,” Assembly Majority Leader Lou Greenwald said earlier. Gun rights people are expected to attend and object. Greenwald should ask the opposition why anyone needs armor-piercing bullets that are good for going through the vests worn by police officers. Deer don’t wear them.

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About Bob Ingle

Bob Ingle is Senior Political Columnist for Gannett New Jersey newspapers and co-author of The New York Times' Best Seller, "The Soprano State: New Jersey's Culture of Corruption" and "Chris Christie: The Inside Story Of His Rise To Power". He has won numerous journalism awards and is often a news analyst on radio and television. Twitter @ bobingle99.

23 Responses to N.J. committee to consider tougher gun laws today

More knee jerk bull from Trenton! How many people get shot by amor piercing bullets? Most gun crimes are hand guns purchased on the street by thugs that do not care about laws. This crap makes no one any safer and is a waste of time. Endorse the laws on the books.

I believe that the Second Amendment does not prohibit the government from banning military-style weaponry from the streets. I also believe, however, that putting more gun regulation in place will NOT prevent most gun crimes from happening. I think that we need to address issues of mental illness and gangs at the same time as we address the simple availability of certain types of guns.

I wish I had the answer to how to address issues of mental illness. Obviously in retrospect the mentally ill people who have committed recent gun crimes should not have had guns, but they had had no prior run-ins with the law. Absent that, how do you decide that they shouldn’t have a gun?

The Empty Suit can posture all he wants about how certain types of guns should not be available, but it won’t do a bit of good if we don’t also address these other issues.

Vermont has probably the most liberal gun laws, i.e., almost none, of any state in the nation. Yet gun violence is nearly non-existent. Why is that? It obviously has little to do with the size of magazines or the types of bullets. At best, tightening gun laws is only one small piece of the puzzle and probably doesn’t really make us that much safer.

Tight gun control laws do not seem to curb the violence, take Chicago for instance. NJ already has stringent gun control but the violence rages in the inner cities.
Responsible law abiding gun owners are the only target since the gangs and criminals will continue to flaunt the laws already on the books.
Unfortunately what our legislators are trying to legislate is ‘violence’ which comes in many forms defined with different means. Instead of creating feel good legislation that has little to do with the human condition how about more strict enforcement of those already in effect and I don’t mean ‘red light cameras’

None of your business why anyone needs ammo Bob. Who died and left you in charge. This is the same type of laws the Nazi’s passed in 1938. Do some research Ingle. What type of bullets killed people in Newark this year.

You are typical of the reason the country has turned against the NRA. If you don’t have an answer you attack the questioner instead of admitting it. Works on talk radio, but not around here, bub. If you can’t make intelligent conservation, don’t let the door knob hit you in the butt on the way out. This blog is for reasonable, smart people to have opinions they can back up or at least make intelligent comments. Ordinarily I would just have them dispatch you to be spam file but I wanted you and everybody else to see the kind of thing we can do without and don’t want.

The tried this once before in America in 1774. The British gun control program that precipitated the American Revolution: the 1774 import ban on firearms and gunpowder; the 1774-75 confiscations of firearms and gunpowder; and the use of violence to effectuate the confiscations. It was these events that changed a situation of political tension into a shooting war. Each of these British abuses provides insights into the scope of the modern Second Amendment.

The government is not coming for your guns. If they were, take a look at what happened to Chris Dorner in Big Bear, Calif., last night or the guy in Alabama who took the kid to the bunker. (and that was just swat teams) That’s what will happen to you. Three choices:
1.surrender
2.suicide
3.breakfast with Elvis
No matter what you have the government will have something bigger and more of it.

Come on Bob, not very comforting nor convincing. The government doesn’t have more people than the public and how many in the government would actually kill Americans? It’s a Bill of Rights, not a Bill of Needs. Nobody is trying to stop you from writing anything you would care to write as per your freedom of speech right. No one is saying, now Bob, did you really need to write that?And you would also be up in arms, no pun intended, if anyone attempted to infringe on your liberty. Same with the guns. Unless they can show us stats showing where law-abiding legal gun owners are the cause of these recent shootings, and they can’t, I going to continue to believe that any attempt on the governments part to create a universal registry will be nothing more than going for our guns.

They don’t need to come for the guns if they make the ammunition illegal.

If the proposals approved today become law any hunting rifle round capable of killing anything other than small game will effectively have it’s ammuntion declared illegal in NJ. They should have worded this proposal better.

Many handgun owners will have to buy new magazines to meet the 10 round capacity limits and makes current owners criminals. Yep sorry 12 rounds is too much so please scrap your current ones.

And in the end the real criminals won’t abide by these rules and regulations, so what have we gained?

Bob, your comment of the govt outgunning the individual while true, is disconcerting. Today’s police forces (& sheriffs dept as well as corrections depts) in most areas are equipped in true military fashion. Having “high capacity, hi power” weaponry, swat training, explosives etc. Homeland securtiy grants have loaded depts to the gunwales with this stuff. I fret that those receiving orders will have the common sense to follow not the politicians giving directives but rather they do what is right (and legal, under the constitution). Too many stories of extensive government overreach and excessive force to accomplish it litter the news landscape.

You make no sense. No part of the Constitution is absolute. No part. Only in the minds of people who don’t know court rulings is it so. If that were the case, there would be no libel laws because they would be unconstitutional. Or you could yell “Fire!” in a crowded theater and go unprosecuted.

You get no argument from me. Our rights are being eroded because people are so gullible they believe when government tells them it is in their safety they buy it. We have a volunteer army because when there is a draft the military represents all social and economic sections and when things get stupid the ones with power demanded an end to wars, like Vietnam. The gun nuts (not gun owners, the loud-mouth ignorant ones with no knowledge or game) are a part of the problem because reasonable and practical people have no respect for them. They come off as, well, nutty. Responsible gun owners should be leading the way for banning excessive weaponry no hunter, farmer, target shooter or family protector needs. Yes, the swat teams and local cops look more and more like military every day. The ACLU project announced this week where they called and asked about how to file a complaint with only 24 percent getting correct, legal answers should be eye-opening. When the media is gone and there is no one to watch government, your information will come from government. And should they decide to come for whatever gun you have, you have those three choices and there is nothing you can do about it. Responsible gun owners should tell the nut jobs to shut up and join with the non gun owners who respect their rights for reasonable gun ownership. The hunters I know are embarrassed by the gun nuts.

I think the former cop in La was a legal gun owner. The former cop in Toms River was a legal gun owner as was the Sherrif officer they both killed there neighbor. There is need for gun laws and enforcement. Maybe time to not allow plea bargain in gun cases.

I haven’t heard the status of that yet. He certainly had police and military training and would be better than most. I saw the tape of the shootout with him. More than 500 rounds, it sounded more like Vietnam than California. When they come for you, the cards are all theirs.

Ingle says: “Our rights are being eroded because people are so gullible they believe when government tells them it is in their safety they buy it”
I think alot of us in this thread feel this way, obviously about guns. As you say, responsible gun owners dont mind regulation, but they keep chipping away at the law abiding while the OUTlaws still go about their misdeeds (Chicago).
Ingle says: “banning excessive weaponry no hunter, farmer, target shooter or family protector needs”. Sure, we already have those restrictions. The current bill in Congress is merely one of cosmetics and the public at large doesnt have enough knowledge to know the difference. The AR15 variants being spotlited are no more dangerous than a benelli loaded with #4buck and in close quarters like a Sandy Hook probably less lethal.
As to the comment “why do you need that”, I analogize it to a Lamborgini. You dont need that to go food shopping! But if you are using it legally and not infringing on others rights, then if you can afford it, have at it.
(And yes I know a car is not designed as a weapon, however if we are most concerned about saving :just one life” as the president suggests, then we should restrict the sale, use, and capabilites of cars.

Consider the adage that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, factor in a federal government which has a light regard for the freedom and well being of its citizenry, the phrase “shall not be infringed”should be a rallying point. Why should the government have a monopoly on force when the government is the biggest threat to our freedom? What lessons should we take from the senseless slaughter of people during the Ruby Ridge incident all over a firearm that was sold with the barrel cut one quarter of an inch too short? Randy Weaver is now a multimillionaire complements of the US taxpayers as a result of overzealous Justice Dept employees, but that doesn’t replace those that were murdered. Waco was more of the same, except the numbers senselessly slaughtered were a lot larger. What really warranted that type of force? Fast forward to pictures of federal employees shoving their scary assault rifle into the faces of the frightened family of Elian Gonzales. Shall not be infringed, damned right!

The Supreme Court has already ruled that the rights under the 2d Amendment are subject to reasonable restrictions. You are not winning the argument that the 2d Amendment is absolute. Indeed, the 1st Amendment, considered the most important of all, has been held to have limitations.

Jim: I assume you refer to District of Columbia v. Heller, in 2008 in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the U.S. Constitution protects an individual’s right to own a gun for personal use in the home for lawful purposes such as self defense but allowed certain restrictions to gun ownership. In that case you are absolutely correct in that the 2nd Amendment in that ruling is not absolute, restrictions can be placed on gun ownership. The people who scream 2nd Amendment either ignore that or don’t know about because the source they depend on for their talking points conveniently forgot to mention it. It does demonstrate a certain ignorance of the subject. You’d think someone passionate about it would spend a little time researching it so they have credibility.

Writing for the majority, one of the court’s most conservative members, Justice Scalia, said: “Nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill,” He said government buildings in general could still ban guns. And the court said it had no quarrel with “laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.”

Justice Scalia added that laws banning “dangerous and unusual weapons” are “another important limitation on the right to keep and carry arms.” He gave an example: “M-16 rifles and the like.”

Justice Scalia suggested when the case was argued before the court that other kinds of weapons and ammunition could be regulated. “I don’t know that a lot of people have machine guns or armor-piercing bullets … I think that’s quite unusual.”

My original statement was Greenwald should ask someone what was the need for armor-piercing bullets. That wasn’t random. I knew about the Heller case.

When another gun law gets to the Supreme Court we will see how Heller is expanded.

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Bob Ingle, Senior Political Columnist for Gannett New Jersey newspapers, on politics in "The Soprano State".

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Bob IngleBob Ingle is Senior Political Columnist for Gannett New Jersey Newspapers and co-author of The New York Times' Best Seller, "The Soprano State: New Jersey's Culture of Corruption." Hear him Fridays at 5 p.m. on www.tommygshow.com radio. twitter.com/bobingle99 E-mail Bob

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